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Friday, July 4, 2025

PM on Auditor General’s Report: Feeding frenzy under PNM

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20 days ago
20250614
Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar speaks during yesterday’s sitting of Parliament.

Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar speaks during yesterday’s sitting of Parliament.

ROGER JACOB

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

“Ghost rentals,” an ab­sence of prop­er­ty leas­es and no Cab­i­net ap­proval of leas­es are cit­ed in the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s Re­port on T&T’s ac­counts for 2024, when al­most half a bil­lion dol­lars was spent by the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment gov­ern­ment on prop­er­ty rentals and leas­es, says Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

“You talk about ‘ghost rentals, ghost land­lords, ghost leas­es, ghost cab­i­net ap­proval ... it was a free-for-all, a feed­ing fren­zy of epic pro­por­tions at tax­pay­ers’ ex­pense fa­cil­i­tat­ed by the PNM gov­ern­ment,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­clared in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day.

The Prime Min­is­ter de­tailed ex­cerpts of the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s re­port on T&T’s 2024 ac­counts af­ter it was laid in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day.

Among the re­port’s con­tents, it was found that Gov­ern­ment ex­pen­di­ture of over $1.5 bil­lion dur­ing 2024 couldn’t be ver­i­fied by the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al due to is­sues with in­for­ma­tion.

On rental/leas­es, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said rent paid over 2024 for prop­er­ties leased by gov­ern­ment was $493.3 mil­lion.

How­ev­er, the au­dit could not ver­i­fy the ac­cu­ra­cy of this fig­ure for the fol­low­ing rea­sons:

• The Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Min­istry’s Mas­ter List showed 237 prop­er­ties were rent­ed by gov­ern­ment, of which 212 were with­out cur­rent leas­es. Most leas­es had ex­pired for over a decade.

• Rent paid by the min­istries/de­part­ments did not agree with fig­ures seen on the Mas­ter List.

• There were huge dif­fer­ences be­tween what was paid by min­istries and de­part­ments and what should have been paid ac­cord­ing to the Mas­ter List.

• A vari­ance of to­tal rent paid by min­istries and de­part­ments of $208.4m re­mains un­ex­plained.

• Some prop­er­ties rent­ed by gov­ern­ment, and for which rent was paid by min­istries/de­part­ments, were not shown on the Mas­ter List, rais­ing con­cerns of ac­cu­ra­cy and com­plete­ness of that list.

• Cur­rent sta­tus of 90 per cent of the rentals shown on the Mas­ter List read “Three-year lease has since ex­pired. Cur­rent­ly on month­ly ten­an­cy.” Nine­ty per cent of these leas­es had ex­pired for over a decade and rent paid dif­fered sig­nif­i­cant­ly from what’s shown on the Mas­ter List.

• To­tal rent paid as shown on the Ap­pro­pri­a­tion ac­counts of min­istries/de­part­ments of $493.3m could not be ver­i­fied as rent amounts paid were not sup­port­ed by doc­u­men­ta­tion.

• Dis­crep­an­cies over $10m in rent paid in re­spect of the Ap­pro­pri­a­tion ac­counts of five min­istries/de­part­ments for the year when com­pared with the rent on the Mas­ter List.

• There were 110 prop­er­ties oc­cu­pied by min­istries/de­part­ments with­out cur­rent leas­es where more than $5m a year in rent was paid.

• The Mas­ter List showed two com­pa­nies were paid over $15m an­nu­al­ly for three prop­er­ties each rent­ed by the gov­ern­ment, with­out cur­rent leas­es or cab­i­net ap­proval.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­tailed dis­crep­an­cies found where rent paid list­ed on the Ap­pro­pri­a­tion Ac­counts didn’t match the sums on the Mas­ter List:

Ju­di­cia­ry — Rent paid $30m plus (on the Ap­pro­pri­a­tion ac­count), Rent paid on the Mas­ter List ($8.9m)

Fi­nance Min­istry — Rent paid $38.6m (on the Ap­pro­pri­a­tion ac­count), Rent on the Mas­ter Lost ($13.7m)

Health — Rent paid $49.3m (on Ap­pro­pri­a­tion ac­count), $1.4m (on Mas­ter List)

For­eign Af­fairs Min­istry — $13.1m (on Ap­pro­pri­a­tion ac­count); $2.4m (on Mas­ter List)

TTPS — Rent paid $51.9m (on Ap­pro­pri­a­tion ac­count), $459,000 (on Mas­ter List)

“Were these ghost rentals?” Per­sad- Bisses­sar asked.

Licks for Faris ...

Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­tailed the lo­ca­tion of prop­er­ties with­out cur­rent leas­es where more than $5m an­nu­al­ly in rent was paid:

• Plan­ning Min­istry’s CSO di­vi­sion at 47 Fred­er­ick Street PoS ($30m).

• So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­istry at St Vin­cent Street PoS (about $9.8m).

• Trade Min­istry, In­de­pen­dence Square PoS ($7.6m).

• Hous­ing Min­istry, South Quay (over $6m).

• At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s Of­fice, Hen­ry Street, PoS (5.8m).

• Labour Min­istry, Duke Street (5.1m).

• Ser­vice Com­mis­sions, 59 Cipri­ani Boule­vard PoS, ($6.9m).

• Fi­nance Min­istry Val­u­a­tion Di­vi­sion, Es­tate Trace, Barataria ($6.9m), Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­istry, 1 Alexan­dra Street, PoS ($8.1m)

• Per­son­nel De­part­ment, 3, Alexan­dra Street PoS ($7.7m).

Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­marked on the lat­ter, “We all know where that Al Rental went to, sit­ting in Cab­i­net and re­cus­ing him­self, and brought back as a PNM sen­a­tor—shame, shame!”

“The Mas­ter List pro­vid­ed by the Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Min­istry showed that two com­pa­nies were each paid over $15 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly for three prop­er­ties each rent­ed by gov­ern­ment with­out any cur­rent lease—and with­out any cab­i­net ap­proval. No lease! No cab­i­net ap­proval!” she added.

One com­pa­ny in­volved a prop­er­ty at Es­tate Trace Barataria ($6.9m rent paid), an­oth­er at the cor­ner of El So­cor­ro Road/Jat­tan Lane ($4.5m lease ex­pired in 2014) and one at 51-55 Fred­er­ick Street, PoS, ($3.6m).

The oth­er com­pa­ny in­volved prop­er­ty at 1 Alexan­dra Street, PoS (rent­ed for over $8m with lease ex­pired in 2019), the cor­ner of Agra/Pat­na Street, St James (rent­ed for $4.8m, lease ex­pired in 2017) and at 45 St Vin­cent Street, PoS, (rent­ed for $2.1m, lease ex­pired).

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said Al-Rawi re­cused him­self from the Cab­i­net on March 2, 2017, for the Es­tate Trace, Barataria prop­er­ty.

“Every­body else gets 0 per cent or 4 per cent but you, sit­ting in Cab­i­net, help­ing your fi­nanciers, friends and fam­i­ly! Dis­gust­ing! Dis­grace­ful! That’s why on April 28 you got the lick­ing you de­served!’”

Im­bert re­sponds

Many of the prop­er­ty rentals done by the for­mer gov­ern­ment which Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar ex­pressed con­cern over yes­ter­day, were start­ed by the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress gov­ern­ment in 2010/2015—and that in­clud­ed the Es­tate Trace, Barataria build­ing for which the UNC Gov­ern­ment paid $41 mil­lion with­out oc­cu­py­ing it.

Stat­ing this in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, for­mer Fi­nance min­is­ter Colm Im­bert asked if Per­sad-Bisses­sar was aware of it.

Im­bert spoke af­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s state­ment re­veal­ing is­sues on prop­er­ty rentals and leas­es which were cit­ed in the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s Re­port on T&T’s 2024 ac­counts.

How­ev­er, Per­sad-Bisses­sar ad­vised Im­bert to read the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s Re­port.

“The an­swer is no,” she added.

Ear­li­er, Per­sad-Bisses­sar had pref­aced her pre­sen­ta­tion with ver­bal blows at Im­bert, say­ing his pub­lic dis­agree­ment in 2024 with the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al caused wide­spread dis­gust in the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty.

“The con­duct of this one in­di­vid­ual, whose leg­endary ar­ro­gance un­der­scored the decade-long ego trip as T&T’s fi­nance min­is­ter, has left us with some rep­u­ta­tion­al dam­age to our pub­lic fi­nance man­age­ment,” Per­sad- Bisses­sar added.

“As a re­sult, we’ve been un­able to re­solve the na­tion­al ac­counts for two con­sec­u­tive years, a very em­bar­rass­ing state of af­fairs for any na­tion ... if there was more as­tute lead­er­ship from the Fi­nance Min­is­ter the is­sues would have been ex­pe­di­tious­ly re­solved,”

De­mand­ing a pub­lic apol­o­gy from Im­bert, Per­sad-Bisses­sar added, “It is my hope that the PNM’s dev­as­tat­ing loss at the polls has made him hum­bler and more pen­i­tent ... (his) decade-long tenure as fi­nance min­is­ter is a mas­ter­class in mis­takes. A ver­i­ta­ble smor­gas­bord of what not to do as fi­nance min­is­ter.”


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